Hot Chip-style synthpop that sounds simultaneously despondent and jolly
Hometown: The Hague, Netherlands.
The lineup: Aaron Ahrends, Pascal Karier, Paul Rundel.
The background: It's customary to say of new artists that their music is catchy, and often it is, but Say Yes Dog's is really catchy. In fact, it has a sort of sing-song quality that would lend itself well to being taught to kids. And we don't mean "kids" in the punk vernacular sense of "ver kids on the street" - teenagers and delinquent adolescents in general - but kids at infants schools. You can imagine their songs being accompanied by Day-Glo cuddly furry cartoon animals doing Day-Glo cuddly furry cartoon animal dances. Either that or being used as the theme tune to a TV show featuring same, a modern-day Rainbow for juvenile clubbers.
Because every one of their infectious ditties comes with a 4/4 beat or synthpop pulse. Say Yes Dog's music isn't just child-friendly, it's club-friendly. It's music for Day-Glo cuddly furry cartoon animals to perform choreographed routines in a discotheque for the under-fives. And yet even at its most infectious and insistent it somehow sounds downbeat, sad. This has a lot to do with the singer's dry, doleful delivery, and it helps create a mood, a tone, that can perhaps best be described as forlorn funk or wistful disco. And this in turn explains the numerous comparisons that have been made between Say Yes Dog - two Berliners and a Luxembourger based in the Hague - and Hot Chip.
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There are little clues in each of the songs on their debut EP, A Friend, as to the trio's preoccupations. "Every time I'm close to something/Break it up again," go the lyrics to Around My Neck, followed by: "Long nights, no sleep, I go out to dance." Then there's the title track, on which the singer wonders, "Where is the friend when I need him the most?" Maybe they think too much. After all, they met at the Royal Conservatoire in the Hague where two of them studied sound engineering and the third was a drummer from the jazz department. This suggests a certain cerebral approach might be inevitable, doesn't it? They were in, variously, a punk/ska band, a German rock band, and a pop/funk band before becoming Say Yes Dog. And now they're just sitting back and counting the plaudits. One website has even proclaimed them "Europe's best-kept electro-pop secret". It's not bad as calling-cards go, although we prefer our one: "Brainiac house for Zippy and Bungle on a melancholy bender".
The buzz: "Next Big Thing" - Noisey/Vice.
The truth: If you like Hot Chip, you'll love this lot.
Most likely to: Sound good over and over.
Least likely to: Sound good with your arm stuffed up a toy puppet.
What to buy: Debut EP A Friend is released on December 9.
File next to: Hot Chip, Whitest Boy Alive, Zoot Woman, Metronomy.
Links: soundcloud.com/sayyesdogband.
Wednesday's new band: Darlia.
by Paul Lester via Music: Electronic music | theguardian.com
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